The City Upon a Hill in an Age of Donald Trump

Colonial New England gave America the tradition of election sermons: Each year, a minister was chosen to preach to the retiring and newly elected officials. The clergy had to connect whatever text the lectionary called for with a reflection on the foundations of government.

While I was in Germany last week, watching the American election from afar, the Lutheran lectionary called for Micah 6:6-8 as text:

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

That last verse plays a central role in America’s self-perception. It leads back to the year 1630, when a group of pious Calvinists sailed from England to North America. Boxed in between state church and English monarchy, they longed for more space to follow their religion. They wanted to build a society centered on the word of the God of the Bible. The Pilgrims decided to leave Europe and its institutions to become American immigrants. No walls could have stopped them.

John Winthrop’s famous sermon on the deck of the Arbella shaped these immigrants’ imaginations and provided moral language as they forged their new model community. In this sermon, Winthrop used the verse from the Hebrew prophet Micah to qualify Matthew 5:14, in which Jesus approaches his followers as “light of the world” that shines like “a city that is set on a hill.” His phrase, “for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill,” became one of the most influential biblical quotations in the American political vocabulary.

The sermon laid out the moral groundwork of a society organized around responsibility, justice, and community. The Pilgrims were called to “do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God” — just like Micah had once urged. Winthrop reminded the people aboard the Arbella that they had to be “knit together in this work as one man,” and had to “hold each other in brotherly affection.” Faith, Winthrop assured his congregation, had immediate social consequences by shaping the believers’ sentiments and their attitude toward each other. The people sought to become one exemplary community “always having before our eyes our commission and common work, our community as members of the same body.”

Though the Puritans fell far short of this “liberality” and “brotherly affection” toward others, the biblical imagery and this sketch of a Christian social utopia stuck. Generations of Americans have drawn on the sermon in an attempt to shape society according to ideas of social justice, tolerance, and community. Winthrop’s sermon soon became an obligatory read in many school curricula. Scores of Americans have pointed to it to maintain the idea that the United States plays an exceptional role among the nations. As stated by Harvard literary scholar Sacvan Bercovitch, Winthrop’s sermon is a “cultural key-text” from “colonial times to our own” and through “all forms of discourse.”

In the 20^th century, the phrase “city upon a hill” became a popular image to urge Americans of that uniqueness. The image no longer described a small group of pious people, but it became common coinage for the pluralistic melting pot. John F. Kennedy used it in his farewell address to the state legislature of Massachusetts in 1961. Bill Clinton drew on it in his commencement address at Portland State University in 1998. But it was Ronald Reagan especially who repeatedly worked with the image in his speeches and directly related it to the diverse American nation. For Reagan, adding some more glitz, America was now the “shining” city upon a hill, “where people of all kinds lived in harmony and peace” as he reminded his fellow citizens in his farewell address of 1989.

Yet curiously, while the image of a “city upon a hill” has enjoyed a vibrant career in American political rhetoric, its preceding and qualifying passages from Micah are almost all but forgotten. Micah’s prophetic admonition has disappeared from America’s collective memory.

In the age of Donald Trump, America still strives to look like a shining city. But with the Republican candidate for president, the emphasis is on theatrics, deal making, and deal breaking, while “meekness,” “gentleness,” “patience,” and “liberality,” invite withering scorn and condescension. As Trump explained in his The Art of the Deal, “people want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.” For the master of hyperbole and bravado, everything is about the façade of greatness. Yet the closer one looks, the more one realizes that goodness is often better than greatness, certainly when it comes to be an exemplary city worthy of the world’s appreciation and admiration.

One is left to wonder why such amnesia has taken place. No doubt, reflection about the principles of a just society fits poorly with the expansionist idea of a global superpower. No doubt, America’s haves do not like to hear too often that their wealth is not only built on but also breaking the backs of the increasing rolls of have nots. And, no doubt, the cancer of racism keeps too many unable to see that gross inequities along racial and ethnic lines call America’s democratic institutions into question.

In this election season in America, high idealism has gone missing. Hillary Clinton cannot muster it while fighting against an opponent who lacks empathy and thinks this makes him a “winner.” Instead of idealism, America gets an airspace filled with boasts of sexually assaulting women, and mockery — when not hate speech — against immigrants, Muslims, and people with disabilities. Where is Winthrop’s prophetic voice audible over the shrieks and vitriol in an age of Trump?

It’s high time to reinstate the sermon tradition in the spirit of early America. Maybe then America’s pastors, rabbis, and imams can remind the candidates for office of the high moral ideals at America’s beginning, and help them find ways to be realized in our 21^st-century world. It’s the moral idea of an America that transcended material abundance and power. It’s the idea of an America that is strengthened by its diversity, social justice, and tolerance. A gilded city with a flashing “Trump” sign towering over its inhabitants is a far cry from the city upon a hill that once inspired Winthrop, countless school kids, and political leaders on both ends of the political spectrum.

Once the elections are over, Americans should think hard about the ways they intend to live together and with the rest of the world in the years to come. Winthrop’s interpretation of Micah can offer helpful advice. Even if Americans are no longer a pious community on voyage to another world, they are still called by the prophetic voice of its beginnings. They are called to imagine themselves anew with humility and patience as one community that practices tolerance and social justice. They are called to remember that the Pilgrim settlers came as immigrants who aimed to build a society around a moral center.

Winthrop’s sermon is still as lively as it was aboard the Arbella. His rendering of Micah still calls on Americans to reach out to one another as members of one great community. Though this message does not provide too much glitz and shine, such message is sorely needed during this election season and after.